War in Heaven by Gavin Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

light, flash compensation, etc. Her eyes were civilian models designed to look like normal ones. They had been modelled after pictures of her own eyes provided by Mudge, but I could still tell the difference. When you started replacing bits of yourself it had a cost .
    ‘You’re still you,’ she reassured me. This was a sore point with her. After all, she was carrying around the information ghost of Ambassador in her neural cyberware and had been accused of being compromised by the alien on a number of occasions. I’d even done it during one of my frequent outbreaks of arseholery .
    ‘Thank God!’ Mudge shouted dramatically before collapsing face first into the sanitation growth. We all grimaced as he started to throw up the food substitute they’d been giving us. I was trying not to think of it as necro-gruel .
    ‘It’s astonishing to think that we actually managed to save an entire alien species from assimilation by Crom,’ Pagan mused as he watched Mudge vomit .
    ‘Is he going to be okay?’ I asked Rannu. The quiet ex-Ghurkha was the closest thing we had to a medic. Mudge was annoying but he was my oldest and closest friend who was not dead. Also he’d never duped me into coming to Sirius to infect Them with the Crom slave virus. Though in fairness to Gregor that was more Rolleston’s fault than his .
    Rannu shrugged. He was stripped to the waist, his compact and powerful frame covered in sweat from his near-constant working out. That was probably the real reason he beat me in New York. He never stopped training .
    ‘It’s withdrawal,’ he said. He still wore his kukri, the curved machete-like fighting knife of the Ghurkhas, at his hip. As he turned to grab a cleaning form to rub himself with I caught a glimpse of the stylised tattoo of Kali on his back. It had been done when he had been working undercover back on Earth .
    ‘From what?’ I asked. Actually meaning which drug. Rannu gave this some thought .
    ‘Everything, I think. It shouldn’t kill him because of his enhancements but he is going to be in a lot of discomfort.’
    Knowing Mudge, that meant that the rest of us were going to be in a lot of discomfort as well. I still wanted a smoke .
    ‘So I’m a hybrid like Gregor?’ I asked. Morag opened her mouth to answer but Rannu surprised me by beating her to it .
    ‘More like Rolleston.’
    ‘Nice,’ I said grimly. It made sense though. I felt stronger, faster and healthier than I ever had. Hell, I was looking forward to sparring with Rannu. I’d had so much of my flesh cut away and replaced with machinery and now what flesh I had left had been replaced .
    Maybe I had died. Maybe all that was left was a sophisticated, or not, Themtech simulacrum that felt a little like me .
    ‘So let me see if I understand this properly …’
    Even Rannu sighed and shifted to make himself more comfortable .
    Mudge nudged me awake. I could hear the whine of the copter’s engines straining. I looked out of one of the windows. We seemed to be sinking into some huge vertical tube of concrete and metal. It looked old. Maybe even pre-FHC.
    ‘What is it?’ I asked.
    ‘I think it’s an old missile silo,’ Rannu said. ‘For nukes.’ That woke me up. I looked for confirmation from the three bruised egos in suits in front of us. They just glowered.
    ‘You know it could just be a coincidence. Our invitation to New Mexico and God thinking that Morag is here, I mean,’ Mudge said. I ignored him. He lit a cigarette to spite me.
    ‘My comms is down,’ Rannu said quietly. I tried mine. Nothing. Not even short-range person-to-person between the three of us.
    ‘What’s going on?’ I demanded from the three spooks. They said nothing. ‘You wanted us here. Do we have to fucking beat it out of you?’ These were truly exasperating people.
    ‘Have you got any religion?’ the one in the middle asked. I just gaped at him.
    ‘Are you asking if we’ve got anything with God on it?’ Mudge enquired.
    He